


Pork Soda

by cherryblur



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Burns, F/M, Fast Food, Graphic Description, M/M, Major Character Injury, Permanent Injury, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 12:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17828378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/cherryblur
Summary: It’s not so bad, he thinks.





	Pork Soda

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to Plastic Taste, but I like this one more.

Everyone just keeps making it a bigger deal than it needs to be.  
It’s not that bad. 

They’re all screaming, throwing up and pushing him into a chair to wait for the ambulance.  
It’s not that bad, he wants to say.

It’s not that bad, he thinks, but he won’t argue. His hands are tough. He’s tough.  
That’s what his mom always told him. 

He hears the sirens and hopes they’ve got enough skin for his bones. 

•

Tyler hates his job. He hates his life.  
Working 24 hours in a fast-food establishment, he’s quickly learned how to survive with little to no will left to live.  
It’s not all bad, though. He gets free food sometimes. 

Free food that he can take home to his shitty apartment that he can barely afford to eat in the dark and cold because he’s 4 months overdue on bills.  
The garlic fries are to die for, though. 

It’s late tonight. Just him and a few others, all 20-something year olds just working for lip gloss or vape juice money.  
They’re nice enough.

Jenna stands at the window, taking orders in her sweet sugary voice that he knows is all an act so she finally gets the raise she’s been asking for.  
Sometimes she’ll feel bad for him and suck his dick in the family bathroom, but always declines his date offers. 

Brendon stands with his face resting in one hand while the other taps on his phone screen. Probably some dumb game he’ll have to rush to put away once a customer approaches. 

And in the back, it’s him.  
Him and Patrick, the round, chubby kid who loves the food more than any of them and is too kind for his own good.  
Tyler always comes into work looking like he’s a corpse, but when Patrick greets him with a big smile and some random joke or quip, it’s one of the only times he smiles naturally. 

It’s slow tonight. Only drive-thru orders and they’re all mostly drinks.  
Tyler leans carefully on the prep counter and makes sure his sneakers don’t slip on the grease-covered floor.  
Patrick rambles about some band he’s in and chews on leftover fries. 

The fryer stands vacant, blowing off steam every now and then because it hasn’t been cleaned in months.  
That’s Tyler’s job but he waits until someone else does it. 

Jenna’s blowing a bubble with her gum and talking far too loud on her phone about her new, handsome boyfriend. Tyler’s glad she didn’t want to go out with him. 

He stares at the inky oil settling in the fryer. The grimy baskets are set just above, patiently waiting to do their job of holding freezer-burnt food in 350° fat.  
Brendon is taking someone’s order in that nasally, bored voice of his when Tyler steps up to the fryer. 

It stands at waist-length by itself, the only things next to it being the back door and a trash can no one ever used. The floor is tacky and covered in moldy, discarded fries.  
He picks one up and drops it in. The oil sizzles back at him like it’s speaking.

 _Touch_ me, it says.  
He’s always wanted to. It looks like soothing black glass shimmering below.  
One of the baskets is taken out, then the next. Patrick is too busy flipping someone’s burger to notice Tyler setting them on the tiles below him. 

His hands meet his eyes with shaking fingers, body begging not to do what he’s about to do.  
“Tyler, have you got those fries re-“

He laughs at Patrick’s sentence because his hands are touching the filthy bottom of the fryer and he can finally feel again.  
Patrick screams and can’t decide whether to run for the phone or Tyler.  
Everyone scurries to the back to see what the commotion is, but he’s calmer than them all.

Tyler flicks his gaze down and pulls his hands out when he feels they’re done.  
The skin hisses at him. Burns lead all the way up his forearms, then dissipate into small pock marks from where bubbles licked the tissue away. 

He can already feel where they start to blister.  
Pouches of pus and plasma swelling beneath what little skin was left clinging to his muscle. Oil drips off his fingertips like goo. 

He feels whole again and Jenna pushes him into a chair and asks if he’s okay before throwing up in the never-used trash can.  
He stares at his hands and doesn’t say anything when Brendon is trying to usher customers out and declaring a code red. 

He’s sees a little bit of his bone poking out through his pinkie finger and wonders that if he’d just gone a tad longer if all his fingers could look like that.  
His skin is slick, red and hot to the touch. His fingernails don’t even exist anymore, he thinks.  
Patrick has a panic attack and can’t stop saying sorry for something he didn’t do. Tyler laughs again and his flesh smells like garlic fries. 

Sirens and lights certainly brighten their dreary Christmas decorations hanging from the windows. 

Paramedics slide so easily through the front glass doors and kneel beside him, talk to him and try to ask why, how, when. He won’t answer and they say he’s in shock. 

His co-workers just want to see him gone already because he’s a sickly sight for young eyes. 

A woman-who tells him her name is Sarah-takes him outside into the snowy winter air that makes him cry and wish he could wipe his runny nose because the cold air stings his palms and makes him shake. Sarah tells him he’s brave and that it’s okay to cry, but no one’s told her he did it to himself yet. 

They keep asking him if he has disorders or mental issues but the only thing he can muster to say is to talk about his iron deficiency that he’s had since he was a child. 

He’s mad about it because they keep pushing him around. He’ll have bruises for days after this. 

He’s still in his uniform when they’re patting wet towels all over him in an attempt to wash away the film of grease glued to his wounds. He watches with a closed mouth and glassy eyes.  
They wrap him up for temporary relief and the ambulance hits many bumps. 

Apparently, he’s bleeding. 

•

Tyler can’t afford skin grafts. 

He can’t afford to layer pretty new tissue donations onto his arms and wrists and hands, so they give him what the government and his insurance could afford to give him for free.  
Pig skin. 

It’s thick and rough and itchy. They layer it on three times and tell him to come back for weekly appointments.  
He can’t touch much and has to learn to live with tight skin that objects to his fingers moving or wrists bending. 

His landlord kicks him out of his apartment when 4 months past due on his rent turns to 7 and the bank won’t let him take out a loan.  
He finds refuge under an abandoned building, one with a long overhanging entrance that wind glides over and snow can’t reach. 

He tries calling Jenna or Brendon or even Patrick on public pay-phones to see if they could offer him a place to sleep.  
They all forgot his number miraculously. 

He’s homeless now, homeless and broken and without a job because no one wants to hire a kid with ugly, fucked up hands that can’t pick up shit. 

Tyler always just thanks the manager for their time and leaves.  
He knows they’re disgusting.  
He knows people stare at his patchy skin, his bone-dry fingers that crack in the winter air and bleed all over the cigarettes he bums from drunkards. 

He wears this hoodie, this yellow hoodie that looks so bright he hopes it takes peoples eyes off his hands.  
A bar across the street from his stair steps becomes his sanctuary.  
It’s dark and reeks of body odor and liquor, but it’s warm and open 16 hours out of the day. 

He stays there so much without buying drinks that someone questions him about what his prices were one busy night. 

He tilts his head and asks what the guy means and ends up walking from the bathroom with come on his swollen lips and $20 in his pocket half an hour later.  
So it’s not all bad. 

Sometimes it hurts, to think that if he had just walked away he wouldn’t be here, bent against a dirty vanity while his chapped lips gush blood onto the stained marble.  
He gets covered in bruises and can’t afford to refill his iron supplements or keep getting blood transfusions. 

He’d still be unhappy though if he just walked away, he thinks.  
Always asking for one more week so he could pay just a fraction of his rent off after he gets his paycheck.  
Now he get free drinks and men give him money to cheat on their wives with them. 

He makes good cash and spends it all on coke. Heroin. Drugs he can shoot up and lay back and be himself.  
It’s even better when he’s high and getting fucked, thighs quivering and body so overwhelmed he thinks he’s dying. 

Then the people stop coming. 

They stop asking for him, the kid with those gross fucked up hands and the mouth that works wonders.  
Because he’s frail. Boney and an addict and too sunken in to feel good. 

He withdrawals. Shakes and almost kills himself outside the bar one pretty -12° night.

Sometimes the bartenders care about him. They’ll give him water, maybe a place to sleep for the night because he’s turning blue and no one’s been in since 5:00. 

He feels the winter will never end when he’s crouched on his cement steps, trying to light a cigarette that was damp with snow. He nestles into his filthy hoodie and watches people commute to their miserable jobs by foot.

Some guy with pink hair walks past him and eyes him like they’ve met before. 

Tyler wonders what kind of job he works at to be allowed to have such vibrant bubblegum-colored locks. 

Certainly not fast-food.

**Author's Note:**

> comment!!


End file.
